The Mini Garden

This has been our first year of trying to grow just a bit of our own produce.We started pretty small and are growing jalapenos, tomatoes, habaneros, strawberries, and squash in pots on the front and back porch. Our neighbor across the street is a retired woman from Germany who is an accomplished gardener and a great example of efficient reuse. (She even collects the dripping condensation water from her A/C system to water her plants with for example.) She has been keeping an eye on our gardening technique and offering helpful suggestions along the way on how to pot them, where to put them, when to water them. So far, we have collected a bunch of jalapenos, a few strawberries that the birds missed, and a handful of cherry tomatoes. But the jalapenos plants have really surprised me. They produce a ton of peppers, and they do it quick! We’ve stuffed some of them, pickled a bunch, and there are more just about ready right now. Apparently they keep producing until late August, so we should be up to our eyes in peppers by then. What has surprised Jeannie and I is the unexpected sense of satisfaction at eating something you watched grow. It’s kind of like the feeling you get when you eat fresh caught fish – you know pretty well where’s it been and how it lives, and you participated in the process.